Totembringer: Campaign to endgame - Huge AOE & 430K+ Boss DPS - (2H + Shield | 2H + 2h)

I've been playing the build since launch and its been impressive. I don't have a the exact same tree but it is similar enough. A handful of things I've learned up to this point (lvl 78, ~T7 maps):

As noted many times from different guides/posts, the weapon damage/atk spd doesn't factor into your totems damage or attack speed, only the +lvls factor into damage. However, there are other useful stats on weapons that go into the build I'd recommend:

+Accuracy (if not using Resolute Technique to help your totems hit more often, I ended up switching to RS recently after noticing my totems at 87% hit rate)

+Strength (to accommodate Giants Blood more easily, +12 on totems feels nice, everything melts in mid-tier maps, maybe even further, haven't tested myself. You can allocate Giants Blood AFTER equipping the first weapon to help ensure you have enough strength for both)

+Stun Buildup (this does contribute to the stun buildup for damage that your totems do, however it looks like only the main hand weapon contributes, not a total/percentage of both. Not sure if this works as intended.)

Other than weapon, increases to attack speed elsewhere, such as gloves/passive tree/support gems do seem to benefit totem attack frequency. So does quality, a 20% quality shockwave totem base attack time is 2.45 seconds, approximately the same as a 0% quality gem + Martial Tempo. I was able to remove this gem after the quality increase and got more damage. The frequency felt good enough and most things die after one hit anyway.

I do not use overabundance on shockwave totem. Instead, I added an ancestral warrior totem with Sunder + overabundance + supercritical.(From Zizaran video) I still get a 4th totem but usually the 3 from shockwave totes was more than enough. The 4th just adds a bit extra since Sunder is a guaranteed crit when target's armour is fully broken, which my shockwave totems do very often.

Mana was a big problem until I converted it partially to life costs via the Price of Freedom cluster in the passive tree. After that, it was much comfier with about 500-600 mana and a good flask. Some amount of regen will carry the life costs so it doesn't become a problem. For reference, a lvl 32 shockwave totem costs around 320 mana each WITH inspiration support.

I didn't start out getting armour breaking or stun buildup initially, mostly focusing on %damage increases. That was a mistake. These carry the build a ton. You will notice the difference immediately on bosses and tanky rares.

(For reference, I use Inspiration + Overpower + Brutality, only 4-link so far. My totem has approximately 15k dps x3 totems. Most T7 bosses are stunned in 3-4 seconds.)

Highly recommend getting an amount of placement speed that feels comfortable. Waiting half a second watching your character do a stomp and more time for the totem to spawn gets painful as you progress. Especially since some mobs are so fast.

Totems at higher levels do not need much in the way of defenses(resists/phys reduction). They have so much life that most of the time they get their attacks off a few times before having to worry about them dying or their duration runs out.

The thing I'm running into now is poison/chaos damage. I'm still on the original 10% from the campaign and there are a lot of degens in maps. It feels like everything spits poison there, lol. Anyone going into the endgame, Keep an eye out for Amethyst Rings with good resists/str/mana.

This ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be. I've really taken a liking to the build. And I hope like a bunch of other loved builds it doesn't get nerfed, lol. Hope this helps with some questions people might have.

Love it...ty...im allways in a state of shock when stuff is fun in poe. Jesus i loved playing freezing pulse totems over years. Until GGG nerfd into the ground for NO reason, it was never op, just fun. Crossing fingers now.

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Shayda123#7629 wrote:

Martial tempo does not support Totems according ingame tooltip information.

It works just fine on totem, what tooltip information? Martial Tempo is tagged "Attack" and Shockwave Totem is tagged "Attack". I'm still learning the exact interactions but in this case it works and I don't think its a bug.

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IZJToramaru#0619 wrote:

Do you mind showing us ur gear? i'd like to have some reference what i want on my gear. i know its stated in the post but seeing that my dmg was half of what urs was when i was at the start of act 2 cruel difficulty i'd like to compare.

If I could just link my items like I can in POE1 I would right now. My gear is definitely nothing special I'll say that.

I think I'll update the build now with a spoiler section with copy paste of all my current gear, until there is an easy way to link items.

I posted my gear in text form for now.

Just did my first couple maps, build plays way smoother then I thought it would. Looking forward to experimenting with different gem setups with ancestral totem.

Is Astral projection not good with shockwave totem , did you try it out.

I see that you went for armour breaking nodes on the tree and I am wondering how you're proc'ing armour break

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neto_conrado#7516 wrote:

I see that you went for armour breaking nodes on the tree and I am wondering how you're proc'ing armour break

Shockwave Totem breaks armour, it's huge.

how do you have more than 2 totem active ?